Expert Spindle Design Optimization System
Expert Spindle Design Optimization System
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Abstract
This paper presents an expert spindle design system strategy which is based on the efficient utilization of past design experience, the laws
of machine design, dynamics and metal cutting mechanics. The configuration of the spindle is decided from the specifications of the
workpiece material, desired cutting conditions, and most common tools used on the machine tool. The spindle drive mechanism, drive motor,
bearing types, and spindle shaft dimensions are selected based on the target applications. The paper provides a set of fuzzy design rules,
which lead to an interactive and automatic design of spindle drive configurations. The structural dynamics of the spindle are automatically
optimized by distributing the bearings along the spindle shaft. The proposed strategy is to iteratively predict the Frequency Response
Function (FRF) of the spindle at the tool tip using the Finite Element Method (FEM) based on the Timoshenko beam theory. The predicted
FRF of the spindle is integrated to the chatter vibration stability law, which indicates whether the design would lead to chatter vibration free
cutting operation at the desired speed and depth of cut for different flutes of cutters. The arrangement of bearings is optimized using the
Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) method.
q 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Keywords: Spindle design; Expert system; Chatter vibration; Finite element method; Optimization
Table 1
Properties of transmission type
and database when the tendency of the fuzzy terms, such 2.1. Selection of transmission type
as ‘high’, ‘middle’, and ‘low’ changes as the technology
evolves. In this article, transmission and lubrication Torque has to be transmitted from the motor to the spindle
types are determined using the expert system with fuzzy shaft. There are a number of transmission types [12] and the
logic. main design configurations are gear (G), belt-pulley (B),
Ftj ðfj Þ Z Ktc ahðfj Þ C Kte a (2) where Gmo and Gs are the gear sizes of the motor side and
spindle side, respectively.
where a is the axial depth of cut, Ktc and Kte are the cutting If the required speed and torque for the target
and the edge force coefficients, respectively. The material- machining application are higher than the capacity of
dependent cutting coefficients are evaluated from cutting the motor, the designers are warned to make changes in
experiments and stored in a database. The chip thickness the design. Table 2 shows the classification for the
variation (h(f)j) is expressed as follows transmission selection.
hðfj Þ Z c sin fj (3) Step 4. Application of fuzzy logic. In the classification
example shown in Step 3, the transmission possibilities
where c is the feed rate (mm/rev-tooth). are reduced from the gear, belt-pulley, direct
The cutting torque Tmax c required for the spindle motor coupling, and motorized type, to just ‘gear/belt-pulley’
is the maximum value among the instantaneous torque Tc in or ‘direct-coupling/motorized’ mechanism. The fuzzy
Table 2
Classification for transmission selection
Fig. 5. Membership function of torque. Fig. 7. Membership function of low cost vs. high accuracy.
logic process for the transmission selection between the 1 and 10, which indicates the conflict between the cost
gear and belt-pulley types are shown as follows. and accuracy.
Gear versus belt-pulley. The transmission type must also
be fuzzified. The membership functions of the gear or
2.2. Selection between gear type and belt-pulley types belt-pulley are shown in Fig. 8. These membership
functions are used in the implication process.
The following fuzzy sets are used to select the The Fuzzy rules shown in Table 3 are applied to the
transmission between gear and belt-pulley types. These fuzzified values of torque, speed, cost versus
functions are set by referring to bearing catalogs [13–15] accuracy, and gear/belt transmission type via
and the lead author’s 5 years of experience in a Japanese membership functions. These rules are defined from
machine tool company as a spindle designer. design principles.
Torque. The belt-pulley type cannot transmit large torque The following example illustrates the expert spindle
compared to the gear. The membership function of the design procedure. The required cutting torque, maximum
torque set is shown in Fig. 5. The torque can be classified as spindle speed, and the weight value for cost/accuracy are
‘Small’, ‘Middle’, and ‘Large’. given as 180 N m, 6000 rpm, and 7, respectively. These
Spindle speed. The belt may expand due to the three numbers are applied to membership functions. Note
centrifugal force at a high speed range, which prevents the that only membership functions for low and middle
transmission of large torque. Fig. 6 shows the membership speed are used for the selection of gear or belt-pulley
functions of the spindle speed. The belt and gear type type. All seven rules are applied to the membership
transmissions are usually not available at a spindle speed functions. Fig. 9 shows the implication process for rule
range higher than 15,000 rpm. As a result, the membership 4. Torque, spindle speed, and cost/accuracy are fuzzified
functions of ‘Low’, and ‘Middle’ are used when the gear or as 0.133, 0.666, and 0.3, respectively. Since the
belt-pulley type transmission is selected. minimum operator is used for implication, the minimum
Low cost versus high accuracy. The belt-pulley fuzzified number 0.133 is applied to the membership
transmission parts can be manufactured at a low cost function for gear/belt-pulley type.
because of their simplicity. In contrast, the gears are Fig. 10 shows the whole process of fuzzy logic. After
more costly due to the design and manufacturing implicating all seven rules, seven membership functions are
complexity involved. On the other hand, due to the obtained as shown on the right hand side of Fig. 10. These
belt tension applied at the pulley point, the spindle shaft seven membership functions are aggregated and a final
deflects and the rotation accuracy of its spindle is not as membership function is obtained, as shown in the lower
good as the gear type. The membership functions of low right of Fig. 10. From the final membership function, the
cost or high accuracy sets are shown in Fig. 7. The users centroid point is computed and the value of the lateral axis is
have to select an integer weighting number between taken as a defuzzified number.
Fig. 6. Membership function of spindle speed. Fig. 8. Membership function of gear vs. belt-pulley.
542 O. Maeda et al. / International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture 45 (2005) 537–548
Table 3
Fuzzy rules for transmission selection (gear/belt-pulley)
The final defuzzified value GB becomes ‘4.19’, as shown vibration is an important issue for machine tools since it
in Fig. 10, and the transmission type is determined with the may lead to spindle, cutter and part damages.
following selection rule: There are significant number of parameters in a typical
spindle design process, such as the dimensions of the spindle
IF GBR5 THEN transmission is belt-pulley type shaft, housing, and collars. However, the most effective
ELSE IF GBR5 THEN transmission is gear type design parameters need to be selected to optimize the spindle
design in practice. There are numerous constraints on the
Therefore, the gear type is chosen for the transmission geometric design of spindle parts, and design dimensions
since GB is equal to 4.19. which are usually coupled with each other. For example, if
the diameter of the spindle shaft changes, the bore diameter
of the housing also has to be changed, where more parameters
3. Optimization of bearing locations need to be taken into account which may lead to a
convergence problem in optimization algorithm. Since the
In order to apply the optimization to the spindle design, objective function is highly non-linear, the Sequential
objective and design variables are established. Chatter Quadratic Programming (SQP) method is used in
the optimization of the spindle design. The iterative defines the distance moving in direction d. The optimization
optimization operations can be expressed as the following algorithm used in this paper is shown in Fig. 11.
equation Objective function. The cutting conditions, the depth of
cut and spindle speed, must be under the stability lobes in
xkC1 Z xk C x* d (8) order to avoid chatter vibrations in metal cutting [16].
The location of stability pockets, the lobes, is dependent on
the natural frequencies of the spindle system, and the
where k is the iteration number, xkC1 is the new design allowable depth of cut depends on the dynamic stiffness of
variable vector, xk is the current design variable vector, d is a the modes. This paper proposes automated tuning of the
vector search direction, and a* is the scalar quantity that spindle modes in such a way that chatter vibration free
pockets of stability is created at the desired spindle speed
and depth of cut. The tuning of the spindle dynamics is
achieved by optimizing the distribution of bearings along
the spindle shaft.
When the critical depth of cut of the stability lobes at the
cutting spindle speed (aClim) (Fig. 12) is maximized,
the cutting is the most stable. Therefore, the objective Eq. (10) is decoupled as an SDOF system
function (fob) is simply defined as follows
mi y€ i C ci y_i C ki yi Z fi ; i Z 1; .; m (12)
X
N
Minimize : fob Z K Wi ðaClim Þi ; i Z 1; 2; .; Nf (9)
C;
where mi, ci, ki are the diagonal elements of matrices M;
iZ1
K; respectively.
where Wi and (aClim)i are the weight and critical depth of cut The transfer function for Eq. (12) is
for the ith cutter, respectively, and Nf is the total number of
cutters with different flutes. y ðsÞ 1=mi
Gi ðsÞ Z i Z 2 ; i Z 1; .; m (13)
In order to calculate aClim, the Frequency Response f i ðsÞ s C 2zi un;i s C un;i
Function (FRF) at the tool tip is required, which is evaluated
by Timoshenko Beam based Finite Element model of the where p Z ciffi=ð2mi un;i Þ is the damping ratio for the ith mode;
ziffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
spindle. un;i Z ki =mi is the ith natural frequency.
Design variables. The design variables for the chatter From Eq. (13)
free spindle design are the bearing spans. The number of the
design variables depends on the bearing arrangement and yi ðsÞ Z Gi ðsÞfi ðsÞ; i Z 1; .; m (14)
the transmission type. Fig. 13 shows the design variables of
the motorized spindle with five bearings (four front and one In matrix form, Eq. (14) becomes
rear bearing). The x(1) to x(6) are the design variables which
YðsÞ Z GðsÞFðsÞ (15)
define the bearing locations. The x is determined automati-
cally with the subtraction of the other known length from
Due to XðsÞZ PYðsÞZ PGðsÞFðsÞZ PGðsÞPT FðsÞ; the
the total spindle length.
transfer function for the spindle system is obtained as
Initial conditions. In order to prevent optimization to
follows:
converge to one local minimum as opposed to a global
minimum, three different initial conditions are used and the XðsÞ
final design is chosen from the three emerging optimal HðsÞ Z Z PGðsÞPT (16)
FðsÞ
solutions.
Calculation of FRF at the tool tip. In order to compute The element in the transfer function matrix H(s) is
the FRF at the tool tip, which is required for the chatter
stability analysis, the tool holder and cutter are taken into xj ðsÞ Xm Xm
uji uki
hjk Z Z Pji Pki Gi ðsÞ Z
account in the specifically developed FE model where the Fk ðsÞ s C 2zi un;i s C u2n;i
2
iZ1 iZ1
damping ratio of each mode is set to 0.03, which is typical in
(17)
the mechanical system. The system uses an in house
developed FE algorithm based on standard Timoshenko where uji is the element of the mass normalized mode
Beam model. shape u.
By using the FE method the following forced vibration Calculation of critical depth of cut for chatter stability
equation can be obtained for the spindle system: (aClim): the milling chatter stability theory developed by
Mx€ C Cx_ C Kx Z F (10) Budak–Altintas [16] is used to evaluate critical depth
2
In modal coordinates, it can be expressed as, K2pLR LI
alim Z 1C (18)
C Ky
y€ C Cy
M Z F (11) NKtc LR
where MZ PT MP; CZ PT CP and KZ PT KP are the where Ktc is the cutting coefficient, and N is the number of
modal mass matrix, damping matrix, and stiffness matrix, teeth. LR and LI are real and imaginary values of an
respectively. These are all m!m diagonal matrices; FZ eigenvalue L, which is obtained using the FRF at the tool
PT F is modal force; xZPy, where P is mode shape which is tip. The details of the chatter stability theory can be found
an n!m matrix. in [11,16].
O. Maeda et al. / International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture 45 (2005) 537–548 545
Table 5
Selection Results for Mori-Seiki SH-403
Table 6
The result of the spindle components’ selection
as ‘3’, ‘8’, and ‘4’, respectively. Similarly, the fuzzy weight Table 6 shows the list of agreements between the
of the lubrication system is set. actual design and the design that uses this expert system.
Table 5 shows the results of the spindle components’ The results attained via the expert system match those of the
selection. The Expert Spindle Design System selected the actual design in all five cases. Therefore, the proper spindle
proper transmission and lubrication type. components can be selected with the proposed expert
Fig. 20. (a) Stability lobes for the initial design with multiple cutters. (b) Stability lobes for the optimized design with multiple cutters.
548 O. Maeda et al. / International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture 45 (2005) 537–548
margins for two and three fluted cutters, and the cutting design strategy is demonstrated in designing several
becomes stable for the five-fluted cutter although it is close to industrial size spindles used in industry.
the unstable region. The optimized spindle configuration is
shown in Fig. 21.
References